Inversions - BookWyrm

Wolf reviewed Inversions by Iain M. Banks

The Culture minus The Culture

3 stars

Inversions ist wenig wie die Star Trek-Episoden, bei denen sich Crewmitglieder unter die Bevölkerung eines weniger weit entwickelten Planeten mischen - hier erzählt aus Sicht dieser Bevölkerung. Oder ein wenig wie die Garfield minus Garfield comics.

Es ist den Fähigkeiten von Ian Banks zu verdanken, dass sich dieser Roman, in dem die utopische Scifi-Gesellschaft Culture lediglich in wenigen Andeutungen vorkommt, dennoch so gut liest. Im Grunde ein Historienroman in einer alternativen frühen Neuzeit, mit exzellent geschriebenen Figuren.

Zugegebenermaßen blieb ich als Leser auch deshalb am Ball, weil ich einen Showdown erwartete, in dem die Culture-Agenten sich offenbaren müssen. Den gibt es auch, allerdings inkonsquenter als erhofft. Auch bleiben die beiden Erzählstränge weitgehend unabhängig voneinander; das führte zu milder Enttäuschung meinerseits.

Antonis reads reviewed Inversions by Iain M. Banks

The series outlier

3 stars

Possibly the single book from the series (from the ones I've read up to now) that relies in the reader having read the ones before it.

Jack Miller reviewed Inversions by Iain M. Banks

Review of 'Inversions' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This was a really interesting book in the Culture series even though it didn't really match the others in subject matter.

The premise of this book is fascinating and it let Banks completely escape the usual hyper-advanced Culture setting and spend some of his boundless imagination on a medieval or Renaissance level world with two Culture agents basically having a long distance philosophical argument.

The world was deep and well thought out in the Banksian way, having enough detail to really make it feel like a unique place while using a lot of Earth short hand for the stuff that doesn't matter (i.e. the world is still very similar to feudal Europe in terms of organization, kings, dukes, barons etc.). The top level plot ends up being a bit boilerplate, but that's because the reader is more interested in the world and individual characters than the political machinations of this …

This was a really interesting book in the Culture series even though it didn't really match the others in subject matter.

The premise of this book is fascinating and it let Banks completely escape the usual hyper-advanced Culture setting and spend some of his boundless imagination on a medieval or Renaissance level world with two Culture agents basically having a long distance philosophical argument.

The world was deep and well thought out in the Banksian way, having enough detail to really make it feel like a unique place while using a lot of Earth short hand for the stuff that doesn't matter (i.e. the world is still very similar to feudal Europe in terms of organization, kings, dukes, barons etc.). The top level plot ends up being a bit boilerplate, but that's because the reader is more interested in the world and individual characters than the political machinations of this backwards planet so I wouldn't necessarily call that a flaw (and is quite typical for the other Culture books).

I enjoyed reading this book a lot, but if I had to criticize one portion of it, it's that we never get the sort of curtain dropping chapter at the end where all of the reader's suspicions about these characters and their origins are confirmed. There are plenty of tantalizing clues about our Culture representatives and their history together told as a story within a story, there are several sly references where it's clear to readers of previous entries what's actually being talked about, but in the end it's entirely background. In a way that's more fun than just having a final chapter that's like "Hey, remember that time we lived on a medieval planet? That was nuts." but I still expected a bit more of a concrete connection to the Culture at the end of the book even if it was just a glimpse of the characters leaving the planet. I did appreciate that the author of the in-world text (Oelph) did spend some time summarizing what happened in his world after the Culture agents faded from view, so I guess that's fair compensation.

Kibrika reviewed Inversions by Iain M. Banks

Review of 'Inversions' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Great, and now I'm listening to a medieval fantasy tale, when I want to listen to sci-fi. I can't decide if the decision to leave the Culture only alluded to a good one or not. I mean, I guess it's unlikely that someone only listens to book 6 of a series, but if they do, they'd get a really wrong impression of what this series is like. A nice medieval fantasy tale at that, but meh to the whole genre at this point.